


The Captain and His City

by AsterRoc



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, New York City
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-31 08:07:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsterRoc/pseuds/AsterRoc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers spends a day in his City.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Captain and His City

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little drabble. 
> 
> This work is actually my own tribute to NYC – I’m a New Yorker by birth and raising, and sometimes I sorely miss my City.

Steve loves America. Of course he does, it’s in his superhero job description. But even more than that he loves his City. 

Today he pulls on a white undershirt and buttons up his dark blue plaid shirt over that, white boxers and pulls up his khakis over those, and carries his leather bomber jacket slung over one shoulder as he shuts the door to his apartment behind himself and walks across his lobby to the elevator. Steve consciously does not hunch his shoulders as he crosses the space he thinks of as belonging to JARVIS, the computer that runs Stark’s tower. It may be called the Avengers Tower now, and Steve may live in it, but it will never feel like anything but an assignment to him. Brooklyn is his home more than The City – Manhattan will always be The City even while all of New York City is The City. Brooklyn may be his home, but Bruce showed him where to get the best soupy dumplings, and that’s in Flushing. 

The elevator dings and the doors open just as Steve reaches it, Jarvis remaining silent in respect for Steve’s discomfort with him. Steve feels guilty about it, but a voice from above really pushes his ability to roll with all the new things. He’d actually had a talk with Jarvis about it once, stammering and apologizing the entire while – Steve accepted that Jarvis was a person, if an odd sort of one, but he was still someone Steve was very uncomfortable being around. Since then Jarvis has been conscientious about talking from visible speakers when possible, and only speaking to Steve when directly addressed, which he rarely did, preferring to instead look things up in the phone book, one of the books in the tower library, or rarely on the StarkPad he’d been issued. 

Steve hasn’t said aloud yet where he is going this day, so the elevator doors remain open after he steps into it, and remain so until he presses the button for the lowest of the three public levels the elevator goes to. It leaves him in a lobby with green marble walls and glass double doors leading out into the terminal itself. Steve waves to the guard as he walks past him and pushes a door open. “Hey, Mark.”

“Good morning, Mr. Rogers,” he nods back at Steve. 

The walls outside have white tiles regularly spaced along corridors that seem infinite, lit by a sickly yellow light, permeated by that _smell_ that all New York subway stations have. Steve lets his grin out; nothing has changed since his time. As usual he takes a detour, first passing the Whispering Gallery, and pausing to watch the tourists huddle into opposite corners, facing away from each other, and whispering secrets he cannot hear from his stance against a different wall. He notices a short Orien- no, Asian woman also watching the other people. She has long black hair held back in a pony tail and wears a black wool coat, and the eagerness of her face makes it clear that she wants to try it out as well, but she has no one to accompany her. Steve catches her eye and twitches his head towards the empty corner near her as he walks towards the corner closest to himself. He waits until she has turned her back to the middle of the gallery, and then he himself turns into his corner. 

“Hi,” he hears whispered in his ear, as if she stands right behind him. 

“Welcome to The City, ma’am. This your first time here?” he cordially replies. 

“Nope, I’m from Queens, but I haven’t been back here in a while.” 

“Brooklyn, myself,” he whispers back. It feels like he’s sharing a secret. When he’s out on the street in clothing like this no one ever knows who he is. Not that he would mind people knowing, but the anonymity lets him experience The City to the fullest. “I’ve been away for a bit too, just getting back into the swing of things.” 

He hears a rich chuckle from her. “I’m just visiting for a few days, but there’s nowhere in the world like New York.” He hears a scraping, shuffling, noise and turns to see that she has turned towards him as well. She flashes him a small smile then mouths a thank-you. He tips an imaginary hat at her, and saunters off, whistling Sinatra’s “New York, New York”. Although the song was from after his time, Steve had been catching up on “oldies” and liked that one.

**Author's Note:**

> I originally planned this to be a 5+1 series of character study drabbles, looking at how each of the Avengers interacts with New York, but then I was just so enjoying writing Steve in the City… I find this really weird, b/c I actually kinda dislike Steve in the films, he’s really got such a stick up his @$$. But then I was struggling with how anyone but Steve and Clint would treat NYC, and realized that I really just wanted to talk about Steve being a normal person in NY. :-P 
> 
> On the plus side, now I don’t really hate him as much. 
> 
> I hope to write more chapters in the future.


End file.
